John S. Adams interview
COMMISSION SENSITIVE UNCLASSIFIED MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD Event: John S. Adams, Special Agent, FBI Type of event: Interview Date: November 3, 2003 Special Access Issues: None Prepared by: Mark Bittinger Team Number: 8 Location: FBI Washington Field Office, Washington, DC Participants - Non-Commission: John Adams Participants - Commission: Kevin Shaeffer; Mark Bittinger UNCLAS 1. John Adam's Background: He has seven years experience with the FBI, all at the WFO. He worked on counterintelligence (CI) for his first two years, then the drug squad for two years . . Now he is working on the International Terrorism Squad 6 (IT-6). For five of his seven years with the FBI he has been part of the ERT, with four of those years as a team leader (one of five team leaders). His prior experience included working for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. He has a graduate degree in forensic anthropology. 2. Events on 9/11: In the early morning he was out on a search warrant with the gang squad and made an arrest. They brought the suspect back to the building and a friend informed him of the WTC attack(s). He immediately turned on CNN. He then heard a coworker say there's smoke at the Pentagon. A page went out for the ERT to be ready to deploy. He took the 14th Street Bridge to the Mall Entrance of the Pentagon. Fire trucks from Reagan National Airport were there as was a lot of chaos. People were evacuating, some were fleeing, a fourth plane was said to be inbound, they needed to get people away from the building, and during this time the upper floors of the Pentagon crash site collapsed. Then the "all clear" was announced. Nobody was coming out of the building. Coordination was desperately needed. In terms of situational awareness, things were a little disjointed for the first eight hours or so. John Adams worked more with the ACPD and DPS and was not aware that Chris Combs was at the Pentagon until around 8 p.m. ERT team leaders arrived. "Our whole day was a perimeter grid search and organizing resources." A huge number of people were there to help out and the ERTs broke into a Team A for the day shift and a Team B for the night shift. Adams was still on-scene at a forward command post, but it was neither the Virginia State Police barracks nor the Incident Command Post. COMMISSION SENSITIVE UNCLASSIFIED COMMISSION SENSITIVE UNCLASSIFIED 2 COMMISSION SENSITIVE UNCLASSIFIED For the grid search of the perimeter they established the layout and plotted evidence with pen and paper. Team A completed its first shift at 7 p.m. By then Adams does not recall the arrival of the US&R teams. Their arrival may have been during the second shift from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Prior experience once again paid dividends. Adams had helped in Africa on the embassy bombings and with the USS Cole bombing and with Kosovo. This prior experience in Africa was also shared by the Fairfax County Task Force 1 (VA- TF 1) US&R. The Pentagon attack was the largest remains recovery that John Adams was ever involved in. The PenRen personnel were great, providing a ready supply of trucks and Bobcats were available. The chain of custody was important to document. Flight 77' s black box was on the first floor near A&E Drive by the night shift team. They even found a wallet of one of the hijackers in the rubble with a Gold's Gym membership card inside. 3. Lessons Learned: Adams wishes that the ERTs had linked up with the ICP sooner, as did Chris Combs. Communications could have been better in those initial hours. Chris Combs and John Adams had communications, but not situational awareness of each other .. We could have used someone like Jim Rice or another supervisor. There was greater emphasis on getting the WFO command center up and running and less emphasis on getting the on-scene command post stood up. A point of friction was in preventing Pentagon employees from going back into the building. ERT protocol changes: (1) more coordination with local with local response teams; (2) now training with US&R since 9111, never done prior; (3) plans now include having ajoint command post near by the ICP. Training is scenario-driven and WMD is now always an aspect of training. ref taken from http://media.nara.gov/9-11/MFR/t-0148-911MFR-00472.pdf